Valedictorian sues over Gospel speech

I have a slightly different take on this subject...

In my view, graduation ceremonies in a public school context represent nothing more than a government benefit. They can hardly be justified as anything else.

Because this is a 'function' executed by a government entity, the fact that it chooses to 'outsource' aspects of that function to private contractors, volunteers, or other designees does not inoculate the government from its responsibility to comply with the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.

No illegal infringement of this woman's religious rights occurred. Indeed, she operated as an instrumentality of the state by assisting in the execution and delivery of a government benefit. Her discretion in the execution of her role was therefore necessarily limited by the Constitution.

If the story were such that she were prohibited from sharing her religious views with audience members as an audience member, then that would be altogether a different matter.



[edit on 5-9-2007 by loam]

To the 'ego' whom is initiating their story line there is not a problem - until another 'ego' (one who believes the content in their head to be real is a 'slave' to the 'false' self as Christians would put it) - until another ego has a 'story' that it wants to have believed than it fall to be victimized.

i.e.
The Christian feels they no longer have free speech. They believe with their heart and mind that what they say is truly, truly true...and so it is not just fine to try to convert it is actually loving - at least in their eyes. They fail to watch to see Jesus never went to change anyone with a speech. Tax collectors, prostitues changed - or not - because they no longer were attached to the story of being labeled by an idea (thought form) which was past. So they were no longer a label, but humans to act in what manner was appropriate at the time. (living in the present, which is all we ever have...past and future are thought forms in the present.)

So when a muslim gets up and says that everyone must get involved with a holy war - the christian (used loosely, as not all christians are like this) will be up in arms.
"What right do they have pushing their hatred on us!" Cries the 'ego' at the other 'egos' story. It forgot not long ego it had the right to express its opinion...whats more, it doesn not realize that the person believes as much as they do, that they are right...and infact that they (along with the 'accused') might be 'wrong' (well, not wrong, but in service of the ego...or the story.)

I understand the evangelical mentality, and the zeal with it, as I was a Christian missionary, etc. (check out whats at my ATS blog,)

It can be argued she stepped over because it was not about herself, it was reaching out into the mist and trying to convince a mass of people about something that they may be far from and may never need. Again, on her part, it was a lack of understanding other lines of thoughts (from experience) to realize you dont convert anyone (really) by giving them a 2 sentence 'salvation message'.

But all is as it is - "all religions are right...and one day... you too will be Buddhist."
(a joke from Eckhart)

Peace

dalen

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
saint, i have a credible point. without the separation of church and state we leave the door completely open to a theocracy taking grip.

There is no 'separation of church and state' so why hasn't theocracy already taken grip? All we have is a barring of the government making a law to establish religion.

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
but that's just treating them like any social institution. this has nothing to do with the religion, just the people running it and organizing events and construction.

Where's the separation of social institution and state? Ah, there's none of that either. I also find it amusing how 'tax status' doesn't count as relations with the government. There are other examples of church rights to which the government will shake their head at, but if we can't establish the basics, there's no point in carrying on further. Many church institutions lobby (though I don't think they should) in government. I suppose this is non-involvement in government as well .

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
but this isn't really the issue here... the issue is that a girl deceived a school and is now suing them because there were repercussions and she doesn't want to just apologize for breaking a prior agreement.

I agree, let's get back to topic. I only wanted to clarify that constitutional point.

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
on top of that, her speech did contain material that is outright wrong in the context of a school event to a captive audience...

I believe senator Venerables at my graduation also mention outright wrong material (rap music is evil, politics is good) for a captive audience. Let's ban them both Or neither, your pick.

[edit on 5-9-2007 by saint4God]

saint4God, we could completely threadjack this and make it about the constitution(and have a quite lively debate), but it's really about a breach of contract.

for some reason, nobody besides you seems to acknowledge this.

i'd also like to point out the very heavy bias in the original source for this story... it was from worldnetdaily, which has a massive persecution complex with regards to christianity and a big tendency to outright lie.

[edit on 9/6/07 by madnessinmysoul]

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
saint4God, we could completely threadjack this and make it about the constitution(and have a quite lively debate), but it's really about a breach of contract.

It's cool, just addressing the person who brought it up. We can carry on, back to the direct topic then.

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
i'd also like to point out the very heavy bias in the original source for this story... it was from worldnetdaily, which has a massive persecution complex with regards to christianity and a big tendency to outright lie.

It seemed bias to me as well, though don't know enough about them regarding truthfullness.


[edit on 6-9-2007 by saint4God]